


After

by story_monger



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 09:23:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2304725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/story_monger/pseuds/story_monger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>My body is a mess,</i> Sam thinks foggily. <i>If the body is a temple mine’s been bombed and its pillars are cracking and the mosaics are falling apart.</i></p><p>Sam reflects on things while Dean tends to the aftermath of a hunt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After

Wounds always look worse when they’re fresh. Sam feels he needed to remember that as he watches a steady _plip plip_ of blood land on the grimy tile. He doesn’t know which gash it’s coming from; one of the minor ones that Dean hasn’t reached yet, probably.

The human brain is wired to freak out at the sight of blood, Sam continues to tell himself. The part of him screaming and wailing is normal. It’s the animal brain doing its job, alerting him that there’s a problem and he needs to fix it. It’s just doing its job.

“You still with me Sammy?”

Sam lifts his head sluggishly; Dean’s voice sounds like it’s coming from down a tunnel.

“Myeh,” Sam agrees. “’m here.”

“You’re doing good,” Dean says. Sam lowers his head again; he’s getting dizzy. The red stain on the tile is getting to be a puddle.

A dull sting zips across his shoulder when Dean dabs at the wound there with hydrogen peroxide.

Sam used to have to bite down on towels when dad or Dean attended to his cuts and splashed alcohol across them. He used to hate pain so much, squirming and crying as a little kid when he got a paper cut or scraped his knee. It got conditioned out of him over time, but Sam still hears that wordless, little kid, animal fear that it _hurts_. It _hurts_ and there’s _blood_ and this is _not good._ If he gave into it, he’d be curled into a ball and yelling as loud as he could, sinking into a blissful white panic that doesn’t need to do anything except announce to the world that he’s in pain. There would be something primally satisfying about it.

Sam realizes that he’s swaying, and works to still himself. His control on his muscles feels loose, ill connected. He wonders again how much blood he lost. He should probably be in a hospital.

“Sam?” Dean checks in again.

“Nnng,” Sam assures him.

“I’d feel better if you had your eyes open, babe.”

Babe. That’s funny. Sam hasn’t been babe since he was five. He must look like shit.

Also, are his eyes closed?

They are.

Peeling his eyelids open feels like a long haul of work, and Sam has to hope that it’s because blood has crusted his lashes shut. The alternative is too worrying.

He ends up staring at a grimy, blood-spattered shirt that bobs and wrinkles with Dean’s movements.

“You get hurt?” Sam mumbles; he thinks he’s asked this already but he needs to make sure.

“Barely, compared to the wallop you got,” Dean’s voice rumbles from somewhere above Sam. “You were trying to play martyr.”

“W’s my turn,” Sam tilts his head up enough to glimpse Dean’s face and offer him a crooked smile. Dean looks down at him. His freckles are stark against a pale face, bathed in ugly fluorescent light. He doesn’t quite smile back. Typical Dean though; he still thinks he’s supposed to be the one to sacrifice himself every time. He never grasped the idea of sharing that responsibility.

“I need to get at your back,” Dean says, now not even trying to pretend to smile. Sam grunts and leans forward; he can feel the bandaged and unattended wounds alike stretching and complaining at the movement. The pain reaches him even through all the mental defenses. Must be bad. He really ought to be in a hospital.

Dean’s hand appears at the back of Sam’s neck and pushes him all the way until Sam’s forehead is pressed up against Dean’s stomach. It’s soft there; Sam doesn’t mind.

The hands move to Sam’s uncovered back. Sam feels them survey their options before settling on the widest gash, the one that dives from Sam’s shoulder down to his mid-back. Sam remembers getting that one. That one pulled an inhuman sound from him and had gotten the animal part of his brain properly riled up.

Sam’s head bobs along with Dean’s inhales and exhales. Sam lets himself close his eyes again. He accidentally flinches when the hydrogen peroxide splashes across his back. He apologizes to Dean, who just smooths down at his hair once, twice.

 _My body is a mess_ , Sam thinks foggily. _If the body is a temple mine’s been bombed and its pillars are cracking and the mosaics are falling apart. No one will want to go in there soon, it’ll be so ruinous. Not even Dean will be able to pick his way through the rubble._

(It’s odd and maybe conceited to imagine this body as something comparable to fine marble pillars and mosaics, but there was always a part of Sam that thought he was worth something, and he won’t banish that voice now just because his defenses are down.)

 _I don’t deserve to live in a warzone,_ that part of Sam continues. _I don’t have to keep replacing plaster and rebuilding alters._

(Whenever that part of Sam speaks, it always sounds so confident. Childish in its assuredness.)

 _Dean doesn’t deserve it either,_ the voice sighs. _We ought to be allowed to sit beside a river and not have our foundations shaken any more._

“Sorry, Sam.”

Sam realizes belatedly that he had made a rough noise. He can’t even remember what prompted it. It cracks something open, a spurt of adrenaline and stress ( _it’s not fair, it hurts, I don’t like it, it’s not fair_ ) and Sam feels himself start to jerk with swallowed cries. Dean’s hands pause, then come down to take Sam’s face and pull him away a little from Dean’s body.

Sam can’t see Dean properly for the stoppered tears and dried blood. But he can imagine Dean’s expression; the one that means he’s being stabbed by the fact that his baby brother is crying and in pain and Dean hasn’t done enough to stop it.

“We don’t deserve this,” Sam tells him in a thick voice.

“Okay,” Dean says. He leans down and kisses Sam’s hairline. He replaces Sam’s head against his torso. He keeps stitching the wound closed. Resetting the plaster. Clearing away the rubble. He knows how it’s supposed to look. He’s a good caretaker. The very best Sam could have asked for.

Sam hiccoughs with aborted cried for the rest of the time Dean takes to bind him back together. He keeps slamming against all the times growing up when it was made clear, implicitly or otherwise, that crying did nothing and he needed to buck up.

Finally: “Let’s get you to bed, babe.”

Sam takes three tries to stand

( _on the third day he rose again in accordance with the scripture_ )

and when he manages it, he knows for certain that he’s lost too much blood. His head feels stuffed with cotton candy, about to float away.

He shuffles through the bathroom

( _blood on the tile like wine_ )

and to the grimy bedroom. The lights are off, so he doesn’t find the bed until his thighs bump against it.

“Careful there,” Dean says. He maneuvers Sam to a sit. “You need to take off your jeans; they’re filthy.”

Sam looks down and has to agree. He takes too long to fumble the clasp open. Dean helps things along after that by tugging the hems of the jeans, sliding them down Sam’s legs. He disappears briefly then returns with a thin, soft t-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms. He slowly helps Sam into the sleeping clothes, and it’s like comfort food. The first bite of the dish that always and forever means home.

(Sam doesn’t have that, but he thinks he understands the idea.)

The intimacy of the dressing grounds Sam; he and Dean grew up running through each other’s halls. They know nearly all of each other’s niches and back rooms. It’s good to remember it.

After that, Sam manages to get himself horizontal and beneath the covers, which feels like an accomplishment. He can smell the pillow—musty, cheap detergent—as he watches Dean amble around the room for another ten minutes, putting things away, taking care of the worst of his own cuts.

“Budge up,” Dean’s voice comes through the darkness a little while later. Sam’s back washes with cool air when the blanket lifts. Sam scoots forward. The solid warmth at his back is like walking from an over-air conditioned building into yellow afternoon sunlight. Sam sighs too loudly, and that elicits a small laugh from Dean.

Dean tosses an arm over Sam’s waist. Sam fastens it to him with his own arm. He sighs again.


End file.
